I snapped off the light and the loud click made me shudder. They might hear. I scuttled out of the room, back through darkness to my bed, terrified the whole way that I would hear the wooden slide of the trapdoor and the sound of something coming after me.
The door to my room, like the doors to all the other rooms, had a keyhole but no key. I pushed my bedside table against the door, knowing it was no protection, and huddled on my bed, shaking. I wiped the tears off my face and listened. I could hear nothing now, but I did not know if that was because of the location of my room, or because there was nothing more to hear. I took the edge of the sheet into my mouth to keep from making a sound and tried not to think. I waited for morning.
But it was some time before morning when I heard the motorbike on the road below the house. Listening to the approach, the pause, and then the sound of it roaring away again, it struck me that I had heard that same sequence of sounds outside the house more than once before. As I puzzled miserably over that, I heard the front door open.
Fear and sorrow drained away, leaving me empty, as cold as ice. I heard Sylvia climbing the stairs. I knew that laboured, guilty tread well, having heard it many nights when she was in high school, sneaking home late from her dates.
I met her on the landing.
‘Pam!’ Her face whitened, and she moved a little backwards, hand clutching the stair rail as if she would retreat downstairs.
‘We’ll have to get that roof fixed,’ I said calmly. ‘No more excuses. It can’t wait. I don’t care what it costs, if we have to get someone to come all the way from London, whatever it takes, we can’t go another day with that hole in the roof.’
‘What?’
‘Anything could get in,’ I said. ‘You said so yourself. Anything could get in. Or get out. Come and go, day or night. It’s an easy climb from the roof down that big beech tree.’
Sylvia gave me a cautious, measuring look, and took my arm. ‘Pam, you’ve been dreaming. I’m sorry I woke you. I was trying to be quiet. Now go on back to bed.’
I pulled away. ‘I didn’t dream those sounds. You can’t fool me. I didn’t dream your empty bed. What were you doing up there?’
She exhaled noisily. ‘I was out.’
‘Yes, I heard you come in. That’s always your excuse when you disappear – you were out. Out for a walk, even in the middle of the night. I know where you really went, and I’m sick of your stories. I want the truth. I want to know what’s going on up there.’
Sylvia’s face was hard. ‘I don’t care what you want. I don’t care what you think. I don’t have to tell you anything. I don’t have to explain myself to you.’ She pushed past me, into her room, and closed the door.
I said, ‘You think I’m afraid to go up there, don’t you? You thought I’d never find out. Well, you were wrong.’
She did not answer, although I waited, and finally I went back to my room. Through the wall I heard the faint sounds of Sylvia moving about, then the snapping of a light switch, and then only silence. I listened for the rest of the night, but she didn’t move again. Only her bed creaked occasionally, as she turned in her sleep.
When the sky turned pale and grey morning lit the room I dressed myself in jeans, pullover, and boots. As an afterthought I pulled on a pair of heavy gloves and hefted a flashlight in my hand like a weapon. I knew that if I thought about what I was going to do I would be too frightened to go on. I had to do it, not for myself, but for Sylvia.
She didn’t stir when I entered her room. I stood for a moment, looking at her sleeping shape humped beneath blankets, remembering her anger. All our lives I had helped her, and she had rarely been grateful. But I didn’t need her gratitude. I wanted her safety.
There was no way to enter the attic other than headfirst, and with difficulty. I set the chair below the door and hesitated, sweat trickling down my back at the prospect of pulling myself up, defenceless, into the unknown. Finally I went ahead and did it, climbing onto the chair, lifting aside the lightweight board that served as a door, and then, wriggling and straining, hauling myself up through the opening as quickly as I could.
I found myself in a low, dim, dusty space piled with litter. Covering the floorboards thickly were leaves, twigs, fragments of board and brick, scraps of paper, dust, soil, and dead insects. Just the sort of place I hated most. If Sylvia had cleaned up, I could see no sign of her work. I switched on the flashlight and pointed it around, wishing the light had a purifying as well as illuminating power. I played it on a huge heap of rubbish which must have piled up and remained untouched for ages. Bits and pieces of it were recognisable within the mess as fragments of newspaper, food wrappings, and cloth. There was so much of it that I wondered dazedly if the previous owners of the house could have been so far gone as to use their own attic as a rubbish dump.
A rubbish dump. That’s what I thought, shining the light at it. Bits and pieces blown in through the hole in the roof or deliberately left by tenants. Bits of newspaper, cloth, wood, and cardboard plastered together with mud and hay, twigs and leaves, and bits of string to form a coherent whole.
Rather like a nest.
But it was huge. It couldn’t be. Why, it was nearly as tall as I was, and wider than my bed. What kind of animal –
Ridiculous. And yet, now that I had thought of it, I could not stop seeing the big pile as a nest, a shelter of some kind. There was a pattern to it: it was a deliberate construction, not a random pile at all. Something or someone had built it.
Feeling sick at the thought, I stepped closer, holding my light before me. I was hoping that, if I saw it more clearly, or from some other angle, the illusion of structure would collapse. I began to circle it.
Then I found the entrance. My attention was drawn by a white cloth, the brightness of it startling against the mottled grey-brown of everything else. As I bent down to take a closer look, I saw that it was lying half-in, half-out of a narrow, moulded entranceway. My light showed me a short, narrow crawl-space which took a sudden, sharp turn, cutting off visual access to the interior. It was big enough for me to enter on hands and knees, but the idea was too horrible to consider.
Feeling like a coward, but unable to force myself on, I grabbed hold of the white cloth and pulled it free.
I looked down at what I held in my hands. It was one of Sylvia’s nightgowns.
Somehow, I got down out of the attic. I stood in Sylvia’s room, my heart pounding hard enough to make me sick, and I watched her sleep, and I did not scream.
The pest control man agreed to come out that very day. I suspect he pegged me as an hysterical woman, but at least he was willing to drive out to the house with his full arsenal of traps and poisons and see what might live in the attic.
He was a big, beefy, red-faced, no-nonsense sort of man, and I wondered how his composure would stand up to the sight of that nest in the attic. He stared, stolid and faintly contemptuous, and I struggled to describe what I had seen.
‘What sort of thing would build such a nest? And in an attic? What could be living up there?’ I asked him.
He only shrugged. ‘I’m sure I couldn’t say. I’ll have a look.’
I had roused Sylvia before his arrival. Now she stood by and said nothing as this solid, sensible man climbed into the attic. My nerves were singing; I couldn’t bear to be so close to her. Abruptly I turned and went away downstairs where I could sit and shake without having to explain myself. I had wadded up Sylvia’s nightgown and thrown it on the floor while she still slept. I had not been able to confront her with it, and she had not mentioned it to me.